ROAD RACE
FIM WORLDSBK CHAMPIONSHIP
ROUND 1 / MAY 21-23, 2021
MOTORLAND ARAGON / TERUEL, SPAIN
P78
Ducati) was one of those few
riders going for the SCX ultra
soft rear. He was fifth, a great
start to his "privateer" status in
WorldSBK.
After the heat of Friday and
the cool of Saturday, the rains
came on Sunday.
This made the Superpole
race so tricky for tire choice that
Lowes could not complete his
second-place finish until he had
taken part in a fight with Pata
Yamaha's Toprak Razgatlioglu.
Lowes was losing a second a
lap to his pursuers at one stage,
but he rallied to keep enough
left-side rear-tire grip to pass
Razgatlioglu on the exit of the fi-
nal corner. He was ahead of the
third-place Toprak but just 0.043
seconds after 18 tense laps.
Just off podium was Scott
Redding (Aruba Racing Ducati).
His weekend would get worse
and then drastically better.
Chaz Davies (Team Go Eleven
The main event for Rea—made
sweeter by the fact that he did
not get the same higher spec
engine to race with that he had
been testing through the winter—
was taking his 100th career win
by four seconds from his battling
teammate Lowes in race one.
Rea said on Saturday, "We've
been away from home so long
this off-season, sometimes [with-
out riding]. But we're in a good
position now. To win the first
race starts our championship off
25 points better than last year,
because last year was a disaster
in race one."
Garrett Gerloff made an over-
ambitious lunge up the inside of Rea
in race two and it didn't pay off. He
apologized to the World Champion
in the pits and all was forgiven. It was
a storming ride from Gerloff, who
remounted to finish seventh.
